Art and Commerce in Fond du Lac: Mark Robert Harrison, 1819-1894
by Sonja J. Bolchen

“Self Portrait,” 1854, Mark Robert Harrison, Oil on Canvas

On a walk through Fond du Lac’s most famous and most historic cemetery, one instantly recognizes on the headstones the chiseled family names of those who left their mark on Fond du Lac: Tallmadge, Doty, Darling, and Pier among others. These nineteenth-century city pioneers in government and commerce lie at rest among their progeny in Rienzi Cemetery as if it were some kind of perpetual town meeting for the city’s rich and influential families. Close by, on the downward slope of the hill that marks the oldest area of the cemetery, one headstone catches the eye. It stands alone, without the security of nearby family members, and reads only “Mark R. Harrison, 1819-1894.” Carved from granite by Robert P. Powrie, Fond du Lac’s best known sculptor, the marker is decorated above the name by a raised relief profile of a long-haired, bearded face, and below by a simple artist’s palette. Who was this distinguished-looking man, Mark R. Harrison, and what was his position among all of these “greats” in a city by a lake?

Mark Robert Harrison, one of Anne Bellmore and Robert Launcelot Harrison’s eight boys, was born at Hovingham, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, September 7, 1819. Launcelot Harrison had been disowned by his Catholic Cheshire kinsmen for embracing the Protestant faith when he married. Perhaps this played a role in the elder Harrison’s decision to emigrate with the family. They settled in Westmoreland, Oneida County, New York in 1822. Widowed four years later, Mrs. Harrison moved with her children to Hamilton, Ontario. Little more is recorded of Mark Robert Harrison’s family, except that from his mother, herself an artist of no mean ability, he seems to have inherited a talent for painting. ¹ She recognized his promise and saw to it that he was educated at art schools in Canada and in New York. Molded both by his formal education, under renowned artists like Henry Inman, and by subsequent travels abroad, Harrison developed a talent that would make his name synonymous with culture in nineteenth-century Fond du Lac.

“Wilson’s Woods,” Mark Robert Harrison, Oil on Canvas

The precise reason why Harrison settled in the lower Fox Valley in the mid-nineteenth century is not known. Many Easterners had moved westward to the new states, envisioning increased chances for wealth and fame. New York Times articles of the day headlined the need and oppor-tunity for New York School artists who were willing to work in other cities. ²

Harrison’s name, however, first appears in Fox River Valley newspapers in 1849 not as an artist, but as an investor. He apparently arrived in Oshkosh intent on quick financial success by investing with his brother in the steamboat industry. His failure as an “investor only” in this highly unstable market seems to be what gave later writers license to refer to him as a failed or pathetic business mind. As early as 1853, Oshkosh papers reported his loss of choice land due to the failed investment. ³ His 1894 obituary detailed that he lacked business acumen because of the failed enterprise. ⁴ Later authors estimate that he lost up to $10,000 of his own money, an amount he had amassed through the sale of his paintings while he was in Canada. Apparently nearly all of his early artwork produced in Canada was destroyed by fire in 1844. ⁵

This negative assessment of Harrison ignores the fact that he ran a very successful art business in Fond du Lac. He produced paintings at a prolific rate, lived comfortably off his earnings, and was able to donate substantial sums of money to the City and to local charities at his death. An 1879 Fond du Lac Weekly Commonwealth article gave an account of one instance of Harrison’s financial success. “The celebrated artist of the Northwest, last week sold and is now shipping, to New York parties, a number of paintings valued at $4,600.” ⁶ A Milwaukee Sentinel article reported in 1867 that Harrison’s Castle Canon was sold in the East for $10,000. ⁷ Compared with the amount of money that Harrison earned throughout his career, the failed steamship investment in Oshkosh was trivial.

Fortunately for Harrison and his career, during his first years in the Fox Valley as an investor in his steamship enterprise, the newspapers were more interested in his art. While they covered the Harrison brothers’ D. B. Whitacre and John Mitchell steamship investments and the operations of the steamships themselves, newspaper articles included thorough descriptions of the oil paintings that Mark Harrison had provided for the steamboats. In an article supposedly announcing and advertising the passenger comfort and accommodations of the D.B. Whitacre, the article instead was devoted primarily to the Harrison oil paintings that decorated the wheel-house. Touting their own cities, local newspapers and those who wrote for them eagerly celebrated their newly-discovered local oil painter and his work. Heralding the arrival of Harrison in Fond du Lac, the February 1850, Reporter article stated, “we have had the pleasure of seeing the paintings intended for the wheel house, executed by Mark Harrison, a celebrated artist from New York [c]ity. They are beautifully executed and the design we think very appropriate.” ⁸ Although one cannot be certain, it is hardly surprising that Harrison chose Fond du Lac as the place to pursue his painting career after the Oshkosh steamboat investment soured. The locally influential voice of the Fond du Lac press chose to admire and value his oil paint-ings. The people of Fond du Lac did not associate him with failed investments, but rather with New York City and middle class culture. A pathetic business mind he was not, for at the very least Harrison recognized a market for his paintings.

By 1852, Harrison was working at an office on Mason Darling’s block. Dr. Darling, probably the most influential man of the town, took immediate interest in Harrison’s work. ⁹ He displayed Harrison’s works at the popular Darling Hall. Almost humbling itself, the Fond du Lac Reporter described one of the early displays. “We have examined several specimens of the painting of Mr. Mark Harris[on] of this village, and, although we do not pride ourself [sic] on the correctness of our taste in such matters, we are sure that good judges cannot help admiring the execution of the scenery portrayed by the pencil of the great artist.” The article ended with a subtle reminder to the citizen reader. “We hope he [Harrison] will receive the encouragement at the hands of our citizens, which his genius merits.” ¹⁰ Fond du Lac opinion makers, through the local newspaper press, certainly were doing their best to stimulate community interest in the value of his art.

Did Harrison achieve his fame in Fond du Lac because of his extraordinary artistic ability or because he was adopted by the community as a favorite son? The question is open to debate. This is of course an issue of values that is rooted in one’s perspective. What cannot be disputed is the impact that Harrison, his paintings, and his legacy had on the people of Fond du Lac. In their insightful study of microcosmic social events as reflected in cultural history, The History of Everyday Life, editors Alf Ludtke and Wolfgang Kaschuba eloquently described and explained that:

It is a matter of fundamental perspective whether historical everyday life is described as a mere “situation,” a passive swimming along with the current constraints, obligations, routines, reduced to behavior that is only “stereotypical reproduction” of given and present cultural patterns (Maurice Godelier)–or whether one sees everyday life as an arena where active and creative abilities are aimed at achieving something in material and social reproduction. ¹¹

In other words, we may ask the question whether Harrison succeeded because his great talent contributed to the arena of American oil painting, or did he succeed because the citizens of Fond du Lac, in order to achieve middle class identity, needed to produce their own local represen-tative of the vogue for oil painting?

For more than three centuries, European painters and aristocrats had worked together to make art appreciation a mark of cultural standing. By the nineteenth century, they had been joined by an emergent and identifiable middle class. Newly wealthy and in the process of defin-ing its own values, this group tended to look upward socially, emulating the old aristocracy. In order to validate itself socially and culturally, the new American elite sought to prove its tastes equal to those of Europe, and American painters helped fulfill that need. But for the cultural phenomenon to become truly American, the art itself had to be unique or special to America. Simply producing imitations of classic art styles in Europe did not meet the goal of asserting a unique American experience. “The situation of a painter in New York (during the early nineteenth century), to one accustomed to the proud atmosphere of art in Paris, was chilling and depressing. There was no Emperor to distribute honors, no Louvre to lend prestige to painting, no Salon to attract the attention of society.” ¹² Those who were intent on raising the level of American tastes needed to look to something exclusively American that could offer inspiration.

The United States was developing into a very diverse culture. Waves of immigrants flooding the Atlantic seaboard and frontier implanted a desire among proud Americans to establish and to retain an individual and identifiable character. ¹³ Perhaps that desire led frustrated American painters to embrace what they knew firsthand, namely, American battles and American history. The natural backdrop for these scenes was the American landscape. Once they were satisfied with the representation of heroic America, the artists would evolve the landscape to serve not only the background of paintings, but as the intended subject of the painting. Imagine the frustration of an American muralist with no significant architecture or grand rotunda to use as a subject to capture a representation of the beauty of America. But with the evolution of landscape painting, at last, the vast, beautiful and untouched scenery of the New World could serve as the subject, and the American painter could feel empowered because he had an awe-inspiring subject unique to America.

Paint they did. The rising number of middle class Americans, coupled with growing American wealth, created quite a demand, first for traditional portrait art, and gradually for new, uniquely American art. New York would rise to become the heart of both American culture and spirit. Americans were turning away from Boston and Philadelphia as cultural epicenters of the New World. Although they housed the only two art schools in America, these cities were seen as too representative of the English colonial era. ¹⁴ In 1802, the first step was taken to found the New York Academy of Fine Arts, although the school did not actually incorporate until 1808. But all along the Hudson River, American painters joined together and shared ideas for the pur-pose of creating a name for themselves in the world of art. Throughout the nineteenth century, these painters would be the original influences and teachers for almost every painter in the country. Their style and success is mirrored in Harrison’s work along with the work of many others of his time.

The Encyclopedia of American Art and other texts point out that a distinction should be made between members of the school itself and the many painters across the country who painted in the realistic Hudson River School Style, a group of artists varying widely in ability. ¹⁵ Harrison’s paintings were among these derivative works. His canvasses were consistent with the growth and change of the school. By the 1830s, “Nature,” central to the definition of the Hudson River School, had become the most popular subject for American artists as well as writers. Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Cullen Bryant, both astute observers and popular writers about nature, helped pave the way to success for the tightly knit group of male painters, based mostly in New York, who could not resist painting the beauty of the land around them. The American wilderness, after all, was inspirational. Its vast, fresh, and healthy landscape caught the attention of many who had grown tired of what was seen as the dark, overused European backdrop. Landscape art took over the framework for defining moral order and inspiring moral action. Throughout the nineteenth century, the American public placed the Hudson River School and its artists at the center of what was the “Golden Age” of art appreci-ation for American painters. ¹⁶ The overwhelming popularity of a single style in America has not been equaled since.

The ideological precursor to the Hudson River School is to be found in the work of Thomas Doughty (1793-1856). In his paintings, and in the work of the first generation of the school in general, one notices parallel concerns to record the American countryside and to express the higher spiritual content of the natural world. Painters of the Hudson River School, unlike European painters of the Romantic period, defined a moral order in the framework of the natural world. Although Doughty came earlier, it was the enormously successful painter Thomas Cole (1801-1848) who generally is thought of as the founder of the Hudson River School. Cole arrived in Ohio from England in 1818 and was working successfully in New York as a landscape painter by 1825. Although born abroad, Cole dearly loved the American landscape and is said to have declared that he would give his left hand to be identified with the country by birth. ¹⁷ He influenced other painters and followers of the school to go out to nature with their sketchbooks and then wait “for time to draw a veil over the common details of a scene so that he could depict only its great features.” ¹⁸ His paintings can be generalized as religious subjects framed by nature. In other words, there was usually an allegorical scene set quaintly within a natural setting, presenting an almost tunnel-like effect. Many other artists followed Cole’s concentration on and conception of nature, including his friend, Henry Inman (1801-1846), who was Mark Harrison’s own instructor at the New York Academy of Design.

Harrison, only fourteen years old at the start of his formal schooling in painting, studied under Inman from 1833 until 1838 at the New York Academy of Design. Besides influencing Harrison to take up the Hudson River School style, Inman can probably be credited with inspiring Harrison in the craft of marketing artwork. Regarded by 1838 as the best-paid American painter, Inman obtained commissions for portrait work, was successful with sales of his landscape subjects, and followed carefully what the public fancied. ¹⁹ Early in the nineteenth century, Inman recognized the ascension of the merchant class in the cities and towns of the new nation, and perceived its need to define itself culturally. Inman made a good living providing portraits for the public. Portraits in oils were in heavy demand from those wishing to flaunt their cultural and social stature and the canvasses were extremely profitable to the commissioned artist. But portrait painting was only Inman’s bread and butter. He had also painted American landscapes from the beginning of his career, long before such subjects gained overwhelming popularity. One study of American painting states that “the public wanted portraits and would pay for no other kind of painting. When artists painted other types of subject matter, it was to please themselves.” ²⁰ When asked about his decision to show some landscape canvasses in 1828, Inman responded, “I tell you, sir, the business of a few generations of artists in this country as in all others is to prepare the way for their successors–for the time will come when the rage for portraits in America will give way to a purer taste.” ²¹ American landscape art was the “purer taste” Inman predicted. It was given life and popularity by Doughty, Inman, Cole and the other early founders of the Hudson River School.

The problem with this first generation of Hudson River School landscape painters, and Cole especially, was that they were pulled in two distinct directions. Cole, with his overseas Romantic influence, increasingly preferred “moralizing compositions that could display the virtuosity of his technique and his intellect.” ²² However, the public, proud of their new nation, wanted him to paint recognizable American scenes. Perhaps that is why, in the years just preceding Cole’s death in 1848, a second generation of the school was born. The Hudson River School can be described as shifting from the romantic, allegorical, natural world into the depiction of a more realistic natural world. Led by Asher B. Durand (older than Cole and credited with discovering his talent) and Frederic E. Church, this second generation of landscape artists abandoned Cole’s idealistic and moralistic scenes in favor of a more “perfectly real” image of nature, such as that described by emerging authors like Henry David Thoreau.

This new brand of painter embraced the wants of the American public and purposefully ignored European precedents and styles. “Do not go abroad,” Durand soberly advised his colleagues, “in search of material for the exercise of your pencil while the virgin charms of our native land have claims on our deepest affections.” ²³ Artists of this generation were intent on painting distinctly and recognizably American scenes. Their work differed from that of the first generation in the attention paid to detail and in the individuality given to depictions, particularly those of species of wildlife. Durand is said to have told younger painters to “make careful sketches of details and scenes, never allow brushwork to become noticeable, and paint light and atmosphere as actually observed.” ²⁴ His theories aligned themselves closely with those of Thoreau, who had written that “the universe is not rough-hewn, but perfect in its details. Nature will bear the closest inspection . . . .” ²⁵ The subject matter of the paintings of the second generation of the Hudson River School were the purely natural and topographical wonders of the world, like the Andes, the Adirondacks and the Near East.

Beginning with the Civil War, the school took on a less optimistic outlook. The war devastated great portions of the American landscape, and the processes of industrialization blackened the pristine image of the nation. The third generation artists captured this gloomier sensation in their work. It no longer seemed relevant to celebrate every leaf of the landscape, but rather to embrace the more imaginative “French Style” of landscape painting, which meant looser brushwork and more somber colors. Many second-generation Hudson River School painters, like Church, did not evolve their styles to suit this new approach. Thus, their paintings seemed increasingly artificial as times and tastes changed. Therefore, artists like George Inness
(1825-1894), inspired by Durand and Church, but willing and able to expand with the spirit of the times, embodied the third stage of the Hudson River School.

Harrison seemed to borrow from and be influenced by all three of the generations of the Hudson River School. Like the trend-conscious middle classes, Harrison kept his style up to date with what the members of the Hudson River School were doing. But Harrison’s compositions have not been held in the kind of regard that is applied to the works of some of his contemporaries. His paintings are derivative. His works resemble those of the founders, but they are not their equivalent. In their current state of preservation, those of Harrison’s works on

“Heart of the Andes,” (after 1860), Mark Robert Harrison, Oil on Canvas

public display do not compare in quality to the famous Hudson River School works. His tech-niques appear fuzzy, his brushwork is sometimes obvious, despite the artist’s objective of a perfectly realistic image, and his reproductions of changing light in nature seem artificial. Nevertheless, Harrison has received great praise and recognition from local critics over the last one hundred fifty years.

Considering that Harrison was the same age as many members of the Hudson River School, and that he lived, studied and worked with them, it was only natural for his work to embody closely those characteristics that were typical of the immediate successes of the Hudson River School. He was painting before Durand advised American artists not to travel abroad. For this reason the observer can identify in Harrison’s work the European influence upon the earlier members of the school. Romantic and moral elements, typical of Doughty and Cole, are evident in his early paintings. An 1852 Milwaukee Sentinel review of Harrison’s paintings described his pieces the Crucifixion, the Creation, and the Nativity of Christ. From their titles alone, one can perceive the tremendous allegorical influences of the work of the earliest founders of the Hudson River School. The Sentinel critic also detailed Harrison’s ability to treat light as a changing phe-nomenon in order to represent different periods of the day and to express the moods that accom-panied those changes. The Milwaukee Sentinel praised both the realistic and the allegorical elements of the Crucifixion:

To appreciate it he (the viewer) must be present at the exhibition and see the gorgeous city, in the background, and Mount Calvary, unoccupied by human figures, fading from bright mid-day to midnight darkness from the effects of the gathering clouds above–he must hear the chilling roar of thunder, and see the vivid flashes of light leaping from the clouds above, illuminating the scene and exhibiting Mount Calvary peopled by an excited host of human beings, clustered around our Savior nailed to the cross, with his immediate followers kneeling at his feet–the alarm and horror depicted upon the countenance of the soldiers as they behold the dead rising from their graves and standing forth to behold the awful scene. The scene lights up from the discolored rays of the Sun, through the broken cloud, giving every object a gloomy distinctness, while the accursed city of Jerusalem, in the background, is covered by the black pall of the dread darkness. ²⁶

Also inspired by Durand and the second generation of Hudson River School painters, Harrison embraced the idea of individuality and particularity of botanical and zoological species that is associated with the style of the middle generation of the school. He abandoned his allegorical subjects in favor of natural and topographical scenes around him and identifiable subjects of local interest in nature. It is this era of the Hudson River School that inspired and influenced most of Harrison’s work. After all, this was the period in which he produced the most paintings. In line with the concept of exactness in nature, an 1854 Oshkosh Weekly Courier article covering the opening of his first studio stated, “Among the new paintings which adorns Mr. Harrison’s showroom is a vase of prairie flowers which he gathered with his own hands last summer and copied with such exactness that one almost feels to stoop to inhale the fragrance.” ²⁷

Harrison produced a number of original paintings and reproductions of work identified with the second generation of the Hudson River School. For example, Frederic E. Church completed his South American landscape masterpiece, Heart of the Andes, in 1859. It sold for $10,000, the highest price paid up to that time for a painting by a living American artist. ²⁸ It is no wonder that Mr. Harrison chose to duplicate it. The painting, considered one of the most valuable of the Harrison collection, now hangs in the Fond du Lac Public Library, donated in 1906 by J. W. Hiner, a Chicago attorney originally from Fond du Lac. ²⁹ According to 1906, Fond du Lac Daily Reporter coverage of the donation, “Steel engravings were made from the original, one of them passing into the hands of Gen. C.H. Hamilton of Milwaukee (formally of Fond du Lac) and loaned to Mr. Harrison by him.” ³⁰

Harrison produced many paintings representing topographical wonders, works that are typical of the second-generation era of the Hudson River School. As recommended by Durand, Harrison personally visited the American marvels he intended to paint. After has was com-missioned to do a painting in 1867 for a Chicago businessman, the Milwaukee Sentinel reported, “Mr. Harrison intends to visit the Rocky Mountains in person during the coming year, and we shall look for some paintings from his brush that will make him the peer of the greatest artists on the continent.” ³¹ Milwaukee Sentinel coverage alone, between 1868 and 1871, reviewed eleven new paintings including, Mount Ogden, Devils Lake, Autumn in the Adirondacks, Mora Amid the Mountains, Landscape in the Rocky Mountains, and Sunset on the Mountains. A description of Mora Amid the Mountains, by E. Coleman, correspondent for the Milwaukee Sentinel, detailed the realistic depiction of nature and of species typical of the influence of the second generation of Hudson River School, which had by that time supplanted the allegorical conceptions of the first generation:

On a small grass plateau in the foreground a herd of beautiful deer have risen to hail the advent of morning. Their natural protector, a stately buck stands as if listening to the sounds from a distant enemy, and ready to fight for his flock. A beautiful doe is drinking from a rocky spring, while at the right another of the herd is coming to sight from behind a hill. Fawn and deer are scattered around the plateau in various attitudes. There is nothing about it which even the poorest critic cannot appreciate and enjoy, while the proficient will find only harmony, beauty, exquisite symmetry and finish, and complete fidelity to nature. In gazing upon it one involuntarily feels himself in the clear cooling air of morning and wakening to new life. ³²

Later, The Milwaukee Sentinel described the detail of Mount Ogden, a painting Harrison ren-dered from a sketch by Edgar Conklin, Esq. “The reflection of the rocks in the water could not be more true to nature than Mr. Harrison had made it.” ³³

By the time the third generation of the school developed, the aging Harrison already had made a name for himself in the Wisconsin cultural scene. Perhaps this explains why his works are less representative of the third generation of the school. Central to the spirit of the third generation was the goal of representing the devastation of the land by the war and industry. Perhaps Harrison’s sketches do not reflect that spirit because in the place where he was living, Wisconsin, the land had not been devastated by battles. And although industry was expanding in the Fond du Lac area, it was certainly not so depressing nor so intrusive upon the landscape as was the industry along the northern Atlantic coast or Great Lakes cities. Between 1860 and 1879, newspaper coverage suggests that Harrison seemed to be painting in his usual style, amassing wealth through steady production of commissioned works for prominent members of society.

The people of Wisconsin were proud to have an artist among them. During Harrison’s time the people of the Fond du Lac area were beginning to accumulate some wealth. Just as New York had sought to surpass Boston and Philadelphia in the world of art appreciation, the people on the “frontier” were anxious to reveal to Easterners, and to themselves, that moving westward did not mean losing one’s sense of culture. The newspaper coverage was adamant in encouraging the public to experience and to appreciate oil painting. Anxious to keep pace with the development in the East, Wisconsinites needed not only to cultivate artists, but also to erect some suitable places to view art. One might argue that artists separated from the cultural centers of the East could never attain a high level of public esteem or reputation due to the absence of suitable exhibition places for their work. Wisconsin newspapers appear to have been aware of this perception, because they frequently referred to the conditions of the local galleries as inade-quate. Harrison largely was dependent on public and commercial buildings to display his art in Fond du Lac. He made use of Darling Hall and local businesses such as Johnson’s Saloon as well as Messrs. Darling and Dodge’s Music and Book Store. ³⁴

Following the example of artists like Church and others along the Hudson River, Harri-son eventually displayed his works at his home studio. In fact, the newspapers celebrated the opening of Harrison’s original viewing room. The December 27, 1854, Oshkosh Weekly Courier announced, “Yes kind reader, we have in Fond du Lac a Gallery of Art. We stepped in, a few days since to see our friend Mark R. Harrison. We found him in his new rooms just fitted up in a part of what used to be Windeckers Hall. He [Harrison] is constantly bringing to light some superb portrait or delightful landscape scene which would be a valuable acquisition and an honor to any Gallery of Art.” ³⁵ By May of 1887, the papers were quite obvious in the pride they took in their art gallery. The Fond du Lac Weekly Commonwealth proudly announced:

Many of the cities of the United States, west as well as east, are only too glad to provide attractive quarters for an art collection, if indeed they do not willingly expend a considerable sum of money in the purchase of works of art as a general attraction. . . . Fond du Lac is remarkably fortunate in the possession of an art collection of more than usual merit, and in which the citizen may pass hours of refined study . . . . Last year M. R. Harrison erected a new building on Sixth Street. In the art room he has now about 130 pictures. ³⁶

Nearly every art critic mentioned the deplorable conditions of the viewing halls. As late as 1950, critics still blamed the gallery for the limited degree to which paintings could be appreciated. About a display of Harrison’s works at the Wisconsin State Historical Society, the critic explained, “In their present setting, the Harrison paintings have as much chance to live as a violet set in concrete.” ³⁷

In spite of the conditions of the various exhibition places, Harrison managed to have his works praised in print constantly. Story upon story extolled what commentators regarded as his exceptional ability. As early as 1850, the Fond du Lac Reporter referred to him as a “celebrated artist who wonderfully executes.” ³⁸ In 1853, the Milwaukee Sentinel described him as having received, “the highest praise from persons qualified to judge their excellence.” ³⁹ By 1867, the Milwaukee Sentinel reported of Harrison, “if he is not King of western artists, [he] is certainly Prime Minister.” ⁴⁰ The praise of his work was continuous throughout his career.

The question remains, was that praise a result of his great talent, or a result of the need of the people’s need to replicate Eastern praise of similar work? Another 1867 Milwaukee Sentinel piece stated, “It has been supposed that the question ‘Who can paint the storm?’ could never be satisfactorily responded to, but we were certainly inclined to modify our views of the subject upon seeing a new painting of our renowned artist, Mark Harrison.” ⁴¹ The critic went on to praise Sunset on Mount Atwater, one of Harrison’s most noted works. The critic, unwittingly or otherwise, omitted from his observations the fact that “the storm” had been painted many times before. Treatments of that subject had received praise in Hudson River School circles long before Harrison imitated them. Such was the case for nearly every piece of his work.

Harrison followed trends. First House in Fond du Lac, painted around 1869 from a sketch made fifteen years earlier, has evolved to become probably his most recognizable painting. The Fond du Lac Journal reported, “As a picture it is very well executed and to old settlers will be a valuable memento of their first resting place in this city.” ⁴² The critic failed to mention that many artists were catering to the historical interests of residents of specific cities. Harrison’s First House in Fond du Lac resembles another painting, First House in Madison, both in title and in composition. Both paintings were produced in 1869, and the story or legend that they were reproduced from sketches rendered fifteen years earlier is also identical. ⁴³

Harrison was neither an original nor an exceptional painter, but that fact is irrelevant. What mattered was that Harrison provided the people of the city of Fond du Lac with oil paint-ings about which they could feel good. His paintings added to the “civic pride” that newly forming and growing towns were desperately trying to attain. People settling in new territories and states wanted to be treated as equals to those in the East. They did not want to be thought of as behind the times. Harrison was formally educated, and, to the excited and anxious local eye, his paintings appeared to be the equal of those within the canon of Hudson River School great-ness. It is no wonder he was so successful in Fond du Lac.

Mark Robert Harrison died over one hundred years ago. A 1946 Fond du Lac Reporter article claimed that, “many [of his works] are cherished in art museums in Europe, England and other parts of the world.” ⁴⁴ It is safe to say, however, that since his death, his works have not gained any elevated status among the ranks of American artists. He has, however, remained a symbol of pride and culture in the Fond du Lac community. Nearly every decade since his death, someone from the community has celebrated his greatness and his impact on the city. Perhaps this is because every decade someone stumbles upon one of Harrison’s gifts to the city and is inspired to find out more about him.

Whether he realized the impact or not, Harrison left his most enduring mark on Fond du Lac when he died. He had no family to inherit his estate, and therefore he donated his residence and studio to his assistant, boarder, friend, and student, Edward G. Mascraft, to use while he was in Fond du Lac. Perhaps this was one way in which Harrison was able to keep an appreciation for his art alive in the city. Mascraft, by the way, not two years after Harrison’s death, was described by the local newspaper through means of a reference to Harrison. The February 2, 1896 edition of the Fond du Lac Daily Commonwealth read, “When Elijah was about to leave this earth, his servant Elisha, asked for a double portion of his spirit, and his request was granted. When Mark Harrison died, the people of Fond du Lac felt they had lost their artist. But it would seem as though a double portion of his artistic skill has fallen upon his former pupil, Edward Mascraft.” ⁴⁵ The people of Fond du Lac were eager to celebrate their new artist. They still, after all, needed portraits and oil paintings to validate their middle class status.

But Mascraft was not the only beneficiary named in Harrison’s will. The week after Harrison’s obituary ran in the December 7, 1894 issue of the Fond du Lac Weekly Common-wealth, his last will and testament was printed in the paper. The headline read, “Fond du Lac’s Artist Leaves Property to Benevolent and Public Improvement Purposes.” ⁴⁶ Upon his death, Harrison bequeathed almost everything he had to the city that had given him so much. He gave the Fond du Lac community $1,500 for the purchase of a courthouse clock (it is rumored that the courthouse lawn was Harrison’s favorite thinking spot); he provided $500 toward the erection of a Civil War statue to honor the many Fond du Lac citizens, including Mascraft, who had served in the Grand Army of the Republic; and he donated money to many other charities, including a substantial sum to the children’s home. All this was to say, “Fond du Lac, remember me.” The statue, ironically, turned out to be one of the city’s greatest scandals. Townspeople accused money managers of mishandling funds and presenting the city with nothing but a cheap tin statue that did not satisfy the veterans’ conception of a proper war memorial. But the controversy kept Harrison’s name in the papers, and, after all, Harrison had merely donated the money and could hardly be held responsible for any artistic insufficiencies of the statue that was selected eight years after his death. Every time the local newspaper ran a story about the infamous statue, Harrison was mentioned, but only in complimentary terms, for his gift. And finally, Harrison left the many paintings remaining at his studio to the city.

Harrison’s name continued to find its way into the pubic eye when, every few years, one of Harrison’s paintings was donated to the City of Fond du Lac or to a nearby community. The Oshkosh and Fond du Lac Public Libraries have received Harrison paintings as donations, as have the Fond du Lac Courthouse and the Fond du Lac County Historical Society (Galloway House), among others. With each auction or donation of Harrison’s work, the newspaper pub-lished a very laudatory story about Harrison’s career. For example, A. D. Sutherland, a Fond du Lac collector of Harrison’s art, loaned his collection for an exhibit at the Wisconsin State Histor-ical Society in 1950. The Fond du Lac Reporter coverage of that event referred to Harrison as “easily the finest landscape artist out of nineteenth century Wisconsin.” ⁴⁷ This statement seems justifiable, based on Harrison’s career.

Harrison was an important figure in Fond du Lac’s history. Just as the city celebrated his paintings while he was active, it continued to celebrate him years after his death. His successful business provided a product to meet the community’s demand for “serious” art. His paintings give the town a sense of pride today, just as they did when they were created. Harrison’s works and his donations are a constant reminder to the city of its proud history. He certainly does belong buried among the “greats” of the city, for he helped to define their conceptualization of Fond du Lac’s image during his lifetime. Harrison, after all, provided those political and eco-nomic leaders who are now buried all about him with a very necessary part of the definition of their middle class existence. He provided them with art that they could appreciate, display, and celebrate.

"Burial of Minnehaha," 1887, Mark Robert Harrison, Oil on Canvas

1 - Portrait and Biographical Album of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Local History, 1890, 230. There is no collection of Mark Harrison papers, nor does any of his correspondence survive in an archive to aid the historian. Therefore, this paper is largely based on Harrison’s contemporaries’ views of him, expressed in the Wisconsin newspaper press, and through an appreciation of his surviving paintings on public display. return

2 - New York Times, November 7, 1892. return

3 - Oshkosh Weekly Courier, August 23, 1853. return

4 - Fond du Lac Weekly Commonwealth, December 7, 1894. return

5 - Fond du Lac Times, September 30, 1967. return

6 - Fond du Lac Weekly Commonwealth, December 13, 1879. return

7 - Milwaukee Sentinel, February 25, 1867. return

8 - Fond du Lac Reporter, February 8, 1850. return

9 - Michael Mentzer, Fond du Lac County: A Gift of the Glacier (Fond du Lac County Historical Society, 1991), 24. return

10 - Fond du Lac Reporter, January 15, 1852. return

11 - Alf Ludtke, ed., History of Everyday Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 169. return

12 - E. P. Richardson, A Short History of Painting in America: The Story of 450 Years (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1956), 73. return

13 - Richardson, 132. return

14 - Samuel Isham, The History of American Painting (New York: Macmillan Company, 1933), 185. return

15 - Milton Rugoff, editor, Encyclopedia of American Art (New York: E. P. Dutten, 1981), 291. return

16 - Limits of space prevent extensive treatment of art history terminology. Era names and technical terms may be examined in any standard text on painting. return

17 - Isham, 194. return

18 - John Wilmerding, ed., The Genius of American Painting (New York: William Morrow, 1973), 121. return

19 - Rugoff, 300. return

20 - Richardson, 110. return

21 - Isham, 201. return

22 - Rugoff, 119. return

23 - Alexander Eliot, 300 years of American Painting (New York: Time Incorporated, 1957), 73. return

24 - Rugoff, 151. return

25 - Rugoff, 152. return

26 - Milwaukee Sentinel, May 12, 1853. return

27 - Oshkosh Weekly Courier, December 27, 1854. return

28 - Rugoff, 116. return

29 - Fond du Lac Daily Reporter, February 7, 1906. return

30 - Fond du Lac Daily Reporter, January 26, 1906. return

31 - Milwaukee Sentinel, September 20, 1867. return

32 - Milwaukee Sentinel, April 1, 1869. return

33 - Milwaukee Sentinel, February 25, 1867. return

34 - Fond du Lac Reporter, January 15, 1852. return

35 - Oshkosh Weekly Courier, December 27, 1854. return

36 - Fond du Lac Weekly Commonwealth, May 20, 1887. return

37 - Fond du Lac Commonwealth Reporter, March, 11, 1950. return

38 - Fond du Lac Reporter, February 8, 1850. return

39 - Milwaukee Sentinel, April 16, 1853. return

40 - Milwaukee Sentinel, February 25, 1867. return

41 - Milwaukee Sentinel, July 20, 1867. return

42 - Fond du Lac Journal, October 28, 1869. return

43 - Robert Nesbit, Wisconsin: A History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), plate 20. return

44 - Fond du Lac Reporter, April 23, 1946. return

45 - Fond du Lac Daily Commonwealth, February 21, 1896. return

46 - Fond du Lac Weekly Commonwealth, December 14, 1894. return

47 - Fond du Lac Reporter, March 11, 1950. return

Copyright 2002 by Clarence B. Davis. All Rights Reserved. Printed by Action Printing, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
Electronic publication by Fond du Lac Public Library has been approved by Clarence B. Davis.

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